


Smiling at Grief

by DaughterofProspero



Category: SHAKESPEARE William - Works, Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Letters, POV First Person, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 02:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5768584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterofProspero/pseuds/DaughterofProspero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My stars shine darkly over<br/>me: the malignancy of my fate might perhaps<br/>distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your<br/>leave that I may bear my evils alone: it were a bad<br/>recompense for your love, to lay any of them on you."</p><p>Antonio's final goodbye to Sebastian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smiling at Grief

Sebastian,

The last time we saw each other you threw your arms around me. Had I known that would be our final encounter I would have held you tighter. Held you at all. Your arms twin booms that locked me in your kind embrace. You smelled of brine and feminine finery.  
Words spilled from a mouth once cracked and desiccated dumb beneath the midday sun, salt nestled in the fleshy canyons of your parched lips. Aimlessly shoved from wave to wave until you drifted into my bay. My quiet crescent home to the sandpipers and I alone. The tides were kind to you that day, a sun-soaked man tethered with a makeshift umbilical cord to the remnants of a mast. I thought they were kind to me as well in delivering you. But it was not I who was to find you. 

The last time I saw you, you embraced your mirror, and I knew that only then had you been recovered. 

These thoughts are forming far too easily in the journey from my mind to my hand. Were I to try and speak them it would be a joke. The paper is cowardly but safe. I would not write these strange things if I thought I could go on without doing so. 

I am sorry for many things in my life, Sebastian. I am sorry for the outcomes I could not prevent, and the debts I could not pay. I am glad you were rescued but I am sorry it was I that did it. You are no thief but something in me is missing. I doubt it was you who took it – I imagine it’s been missing for a long time – but only now do I feel it’s absence. I am sorry for myself that I may find but never keep. 

Selfishly, I hope you think of me as often as I do you. Repeat our time together in your dreams. Wish to see my ship on the thin horizon. But I know you will not. Please do not pity me; but if you must, pity me for being unlucky.  
You are the rock that anchors fluttering hearts and lost souls. I am the wave that follows the wind, ceaselessly breaking and receding against a shore that cannot have me. Even if I could stay with you I would only wear you down. 

The last time I saw you I knew you were never mine to love. 

Maybe in another life.

Your servant, always,  
Antonio

**Author's Note:**

> I wouldn't consider myself a really hardcore shipper most of the time. Like, I don't know if I've ever truly got up in arms. But FUCK. ANTONIO. AND SEBASTIAN. MMMAAARGH.  
> Yup.
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
